Boy, did I pick the wrong time to take a mini-vacation from blogging! The unholy trinity of controversial topics erupted on the Godblogosphere in the last few days: sex, politics, and homeschooling.

I’ll be commenting on the first and last issues once I clear my plate. Call me Slammed right now. My posterior actually hurts from sitting in chairs all day typing away. Plus, we’re doubling up on my son’s homeschooling to end by the close of May. More sitting there, too.

And then my in-laws were visiting in Greensburg, KS, when that town got erased off the face of the planet by what must’ve been the mother of all tornadoes. I’ve been to Greensburg myself; my wife grew up in a minuscule town just eight miles away. A few years ago, we went back to that area and I had the curious pleasure of descending the depths of the world’s largest hand-dug well, the key attraction in Greensburg. How eerie that the first image we saw of the devastation was the smashed sign for the well.

Praise God my in-laws escaped unharmed, plus saved their van and laptop. They lost everything else, though.

Life is like that, isn’t it? In myriad ways, most of us escape the truly awful consequences of life by the skin of our teeth. I suspect that many of us will arrive that way in heaven. How sad to think that most of what we’ve done will be tested by flames, only to burn! I pray that at least something of my life is gold and not all dross. Don’t want to make it into heaven smelling of smoke from that testing! I deal with enough shame as it is.

More later.

Update: The images of the destruction in Greensburg are mind-boggling. When I saw this aerial series of photos, I thought one thing: Hiroshima.

{Image: Greensburg, KS: sign for The World’s Largest Hand-dug Well post-tornado – copyright, The Associated Press}